Twitter is known for its Larry the bird logo. The blue mascot has been the brand identity that gave a new meaning to the word "tweet" when saying things, and giving that well-known Twitter egg visual identity before users upload a profile picture.
As Twitter rethinks about the default profile photo for its users, it's changing it so users won't be having that egg identity anymore. Instead, they'll be having a silhouette, pretty much like any social media out there.
Seen as a downgrade, Twitter said that some people keep the egg profile picture because they thought it was cute and even a bit personal since the eggs came with a a randomized background color. Because of the unique traits, some users never bothered to to change it out to anything else, literally making them unwilling to upload a photo that actually show off something about themselves.
And as a matter of fact, the egg has also come to be associated with trolls.
So basically here, Twitter is introducing a 'boring default profile picture' so users will be willing to change it.
Another thing that Twitter is changing, is how it sees usernames in replies. The platform is not anymore seeing @usernames as something that counts toward the 140-characters limit.
To do so, Twitter is also introducing some visual changes. The first is to the name of the person a user is replying to, is now shown up above the tweet text. This makes the tweet reply box a little cleaner and less cluttered. The second is giving users the ability to specify who they want to reply within a group conversation. They just need to tap on the names next to the 'Replying to…' and pick the exact people they want.
These changes should help avoid some of the confusion, and it's also a move that is in line with Twitter's broader effort to go 'beyond 140' characters and give people more room to tweet without dramatically altering the company's signature 140-character limit.
But again, either the elimination of the egg default profile or usernames not counted to the character limit will essentially fix Twitter's problem. However, the company has indeed made some meaningful steps to ease users (especially new ones) and improving experience.
